


If Clothes Make The Man...

by prof_pangaea



Category: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: F/M, Gen, Trans Female Character, WITHOUT REALISING IT, a fact which 90 percent of the fandom has failed to notice :(, mary russell is secretly the queerest book series ever, the author was working some shit out, transgender awesomeness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prof_pangaea/pseuds/prof_pangaea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Russell is indeed a very extraordinary woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Clothes Make The Man...

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hey guys, here is a weird thing to experience: writing a story about a character being trans BEFORE YOU'VE REALISED THAT YOU, YOURSELF, ARE TRANS. Brains, man. They're fucked up. This was originally posted in April, 2005. I'd tweak it a bit if I was writing it now, with years of awesome transliness behind me, but the core of it still rings true, I think. 
> 
> Reading this years later, with my sexy stubble on my chin (courtesy of some sweet artificial testosterone injected into my legmeats), is kind of amazing. :D

_"The moment my short cropped, pomade-sleek, unquestionably masculine hair passed beneath his nose was the closest I've ever seen Holmes to fainting dead away." _\-- The Game_ _

 

"You know, I came quite close to having a fatal apoplectic seizure when you entered wearing that incredible haircut," Holmes said, regarding me with one raised eyebrow. Of course he would find it amusing.

"It was a calculated risk that, at the very sight of me, you would spontaneously combust and that the whole plan would be ruined. I put the probability at about seventeen percent, which I felt was reasonable. In the circumstances."

"Quite so. In the circumstances." He smiled crookedly at me and ran one hand softly over the short bristles at the nape of my neck. I scowled.

"Don't get too used to it, Holmes."

He almost succeeded in schooling his face into a more serious expression.

"Of course."

 

**********

 

_Three Years Earlier_

"Holmes," I said, my back turned to him, "It cannot be beneficial for a man even with a slight concussion to stare so." I did not have to be facing him to feel the weight of those eyes upon me. I wondered if someone had taught him that peculiarly penetrating gaze, or if it was merely an hereditary trait.

"I do hope that you are not regretting the events of earlier today. I certainly do not."

Damn the man.

I turned around to look him in the eye -- something I had been trying to avoid. I knew the sight of him stretched out on my horrible modern sofa, head and arms swathed in bandages, would do nothing to strengthen my resolve.

"Holmes, even _you_ must admit that there are grave difficulties in the matter."

He shrugged, with just a hint of insouciance in the gesture.

"For God's sake, Holmes, this isn't simply a matter of social custom; there are serious legal issues involved --"

"Mycroft will deal with anything that comes up." He said it as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

" _Mycroft_? Even he cannot do everything, you know. And in any case..." I faltered. "Well, how do you know he will even wish to help?"

"I have done him a great number of services over the years, you know." At my sour expression Holmes laughed, and said, "Russell, he is my brother. And at this point in our lives at least, he won't begrudge me a little happiness. Besides, he's known about you for some years now."

"Yes, well, knowing something intellectually is one thing, but being face to face with the truth is quite another." 

"Ah," he said. He could be quite infuriating at times. "Perhaps I can put your mind at ease regarding some of your concerns." He shifted a little on the sofa and patted the space he had made. I eyed him warily for a few moments, but in the end I sat. He did not put an arm around me, as I had expected. He did not even look me in the eye, but spoke in a quiet, but clear, voice.

"It might interest you to know that I was, for the greater part of my adult life, hopelessly in love with a certain Dr. John H. Watson."

I stared stupidly at him.

Before I could even think to form a question, he continued. "For several decades, in fact. But something extraordinary happened when we were in Palestine two years ago. It was when I was in the hands of... Karim Bey, and I was quite sure that I had only a few hours left to live, and terrible ones, at that. And I suddenly realised that for the first time in nearly forty years, it wasn't Watson who occupied my thoughts, but you."

I fear I continued to stare quite stupidly.

"Palestine. So that was before..." I trailed off.

He finally looked at me.

"Yes."

There was a long silence as I tried to think of some way to respond.

"Holmes," I finally said. "You are a most extraordinary man."

"And you, Russell, are a most extraordinary woman."

I smiled.

 

**********

 

_Five Years Earlier_

When I woke again I found Holmes just as he had been, sitting in a chair next to my hard hospital bed. His head was turned away; I think he may have been looking out the window. I studied his fuzzy profile and tried to come to terms with where I was and what must have happened. What everyone must now know. 

Hospitals. I sighed. 

At this sign of consciousness Holmes turned back round toward me. Without my spectacles I could not read his expression. My thoughts must have shown upon my face in some fashion for he picked my spectacles up off of the bedside table and gently set them upon my face. The room evidenced itself in almost dizzying detail, but at least Holmes was in focus. 

"You needn't be concerned," he said, and I would have laughed if I hadn't been so nauseous. 

"Wouldn't you be?" I managed to croak. Almost immediately a glass of water was held for me, the straw at my lips. I drank gratefully. 

"Of course I would be. I am saying 'you needn't be concerned' because everything has been taken care of."

I choked a little on the water.

My brain, sluggish as it was, had quite a few responses to this enormous statement, but all my throat could manage was a feeble, "...What?"

"I sent Will for the doctor, but you were bleeding so badly, I had to do something. When I cut open your shirt to get to the bullet wound... I could not help but notice." He paused then, an apology for seeing what he ought not, for knowing what he ought not. For discovering simultaneously my shame and my terrible lie. 

"It must have been a shock," I found myself saying. His mouth quirked up in an involuntary reaction.

"It was, at that. Though of course I was amazed more by my own blindness than by any action of yours, I may add." This, somehow, did not surprise me. "However," he continued, "as I see you are still very tired, I will come to the point. I realised at that moment that quick action was required if your secret was to remain so. I gathered you up and ran you to your devilish automobile -- no need to look so alarmed, Russell, Donleavy was quite dead at that point -- and somehow got you, myself, and the machine into the city all in one piece; and more importantly, to this very establishment. In most respects it is a normal civilian hospital," he said, gesturing vaguely with his hand, 'but it is also used by Mycroft and his ilk when one of their people need good treatment and no questions. I did have to tell Mycroft," he added, with another slight apologetic pause. "But only he, the doctor, and myself know. And it shall stay that way."

I don't think I could have been more astonished had Holmes detailed that he, and not my mathematics tutor, had been the one to shoot me through the chest in his laboratory. Thankfully I was too weak to gape at him as was my inclination. 

"But...." I could not understand. "Such risk...." Holmes made a dismissive noise. For some reason, this made me unaccountably angry, when moments before I had been flooded with relief, confusion, and gratitude. Of course he would simply dismiss my closest secret, the most intimate of facts -- what did it matter to him? Just another bit of information to index, just another little mystery solved. I turned away with a bitter expression on my face.

"Russell." He sighed, very lightly. "Melodrama does not become you. What do you want from me? Some sort of ridiculous emotional episode about how I never really knew you? You must realise that that is quite beyond my capability. Besides, it is hardly as if I have never come across such things before in my life; I am a fairly broad-minded man. In any case, such an outburst would hardly be truthful. I have known you; I do know you. Mere physical detail can hardly change those facts."

" _Mere physical detail_ \--" I would have exploded if I had possessed the strength.

"I do admit it is a rather large detail," he added, wryly. "But it is hardly the overriding aspect of your character, is it? You are still the same Mary Russell whom I knew a week ago." He looked at me quite seriously. "I promise, I still regard you as just as feminine now as I did then."

It was a distinctly backhanded comment, but I understood his meaning. I searched his face.

"Truly?"

"When have I ever spoken false to you?"

I think that I would have swept the man into a crushing embrace, if only I had been able. As it was, I contented myself with a no doubt pathetically weak squeeze of his hand. His mouth twitched again.

"I must say, however, that I do feel a certain vindication in regards to my first analysis of you on the downs...."

I groaned. I knew he would never let me live that down.

 

**********

 

"You know, the haircut was one thing, Russell, but I must say," and at this Holmes fixed me with a most serious gaze, "it was really the moustache that almost proved my undoing." 

I threw my pillow at him. 

 

 

end


End file.
